I am full of useless information. As I’ve shared before, my childhood was not the best, but there were moments of bliss, but you’ll be surprised at where I got the most enjoyment. In 1973, we moved from San Diego to a nearby little town called La Mesa. Now we were a religious practicing Catholic family. We all went to the same school, but my parents got divorced and my life became a living hell. But I discovered an escape. Now education was different at that time, something’s better, some things worse. I don’t really know how to say this without sounding a little arrogant, so I’m just going to throw it out there. Every one in my family was pretty smart. When I went to public school, I was easily 3 grades further along than the other second graders.

More on that in a moment. I want to share this part before going any further. When we moved into the house, the other family was still moving the last few things out, but they had a few things left in the garage. They asked my dad if they could keep it there for a little while. Well, dad being dad, he struck up a nice little bargain, He said no problem, but in exchange, they had to leave a set of encyclopedias behind. The other guy laughed and was cool with it. These would become my best friends and advocates.

Now, back to the school thing, we got weekly scholastic books to read, and I was just zipping through them, we had a chart on the wall with stars for each book read. I wasn’t trying to show off, I was just reading faster than the other kids.

Within a couple of weeks, I was 1 on the list, so the teacher gave me a couple of books that were at a supposed higher level of comprehension, for older students, and she set me apart from the other children like I was bad or something. I was sent to the principals office because the girl who I had overtaken for the most books read threw a book at me, so in return, I spit in her hair. Hey, we were kids.

So the next day the teacher said here, read this, and handed me a dictionary. I gladly started reading it and was hooked. She hated me, I don’t know why, but I thought that was the coolest book in the world. While not exactly the collegiate level, it was great fun for me. So I asked mom if we had one. She told me to go to the bookcase and look. So there it was, the Webster’s colligate version dictionary.